Flash points where player meets part

JOAQUIN PHOENIX

“Walk the Line”

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IN “Walk the Line,” there’s no way to miss the moment when the young Johnny Cash finds his true voice. At the studios of Sun Records, the aspiring singer is absorbing a crushing critique from legendary producer Sam Phillips, who mocks him as a bland cipher for bringing nothing original to the microphone. Cash responds by performing a composition of his own, “Folsom Prison Blues,” and in the span of one short song, the real Man in Black seems to emerge.

For actor Joaquin Phoenix, it’s harder to identify the moment of transformation in his own search for Cash’s voice. “There wasn’t really a scene -- there never really is, at least not with me. It’s smaller moments, little things. It’s when I’m no longer thinking about what I’m doing, I’m just doing it. And it happened early on with this role” -- during the weeks leading up to the film shoot when he was still being coached for the movie’s singing and guitar duties.

“The turning point for me,” says the 31-year-old actor, “was this one day when I was rehearsing with the band and we went through an entire set without stopping, we just tore through without messing up or missing any chords. And at the end I realized, hey, we just did a whole set. I was no longer thinking about things. And that’s the goal.”

Last year, Jamie Foxx won the Oscar for best actor with a portrayal of Ray Charles that was astonishing for its physical re-creation of the late soul man in voice and appearance. Phoenix took a very different approach to playing Cash. The actor worked hard to capture the physicality of the country icon (his stiff-kneed walk, his intense stage prowl, etc.) but, unlike with Foxx in “Ray,” no one would mistake a movie still of Phoenix for a concert photo of the real singer.

James Mangold, who directed and co-wrote “Walk the Line,” had told Phoenix at the start that he wanted an interpretation of Cash, not an imitation. Phoenix responded by immersing himself in the study of his subject, but he set aside mechanical thinking once the cameras began rolling.

“It’s like when you’re a kid and you learn to ride a bike -- at first you think about your balance and left foot, right foot, left foot,” he says. “But then once you learn it, you stop analyzing and just ... ride.”

If Phoenix found Cash on a rehearsal sound stage, he let go of him at Folsom Prison in January. It was the actor’s idea to revisit the site of Cash’s famed 1968 concert to screen the film and sing a few Cash hits for the prisoners. It may have sounded like a contrived stunt to some, but Phoenix, like Cash, has a healthy disregard for public perception in some matters.

“That’s what John would have wanted and that made it the right thing to do,” the actor says. “For me, in some ways it was the completion of the journey. It felt like a full circle. I didn’t plan it to be a farewell, but it did feel like one.”

-- Geoff Boucher